Letters: David Hockney should stick to painting

The 85% of Australian suburban non-smoking philistines whose taxes helped assist in the 1999 .9m purchase of his A Bigger Grand Canyon for the National Gallery in Canberra will be devastated to know that David Hockney thinks they don’t cut the mustard as Bohemians (Letters, 27 January). Hockney’s unctuous spray about efforts to reduce tobacco-caused disease was painfully deep in personal rationalisation. Like some Russian roulette survivor convinced the game is safe and that it makes him all interesting and insightful, he apparently cannot see past his own longevity as evidence that the case against smoking is exaggerated.

Yes, we all die. But Richard Doll’s 50-year British doctors cohort study showed half of long-term smokers die from a tobacco-caused disease, with those dying losing an average 12 years off normal life expectancy. Patrick Swayze (57), Nat King Cole (45), George Harrison (58), George VI (56), Betty Grable (56), Mary Wells (49), and Beach Boy Carl Wilson (51) were all lifetime smokers.

Many who die from smoking, like those with emphysema, live wretched lives for years with their lungs shredded. They could not walk up gallery steps to share Hockney’s aesthetic sensibilities. Assume that George Harrison started smoking at 14, and smoked 20 a day for 44 years, taking five minutes to baste his lungs with each of his 321,420 cigarettes. He would have cumulatively smoked for just over three years. Average life expectancy for a British man is 78, so Harrison perhaps lost 20 years, meaning that each cigarette he smoked took about 6.6 times more off his life than it took to smoke it. David Hockney should stick to painting.Professor Simon ChapmanSydney School of Public Health

• I have just made the long journey to London solely for the immense thrill and pleasure of seeing David Hockney’s exhibition at the Royal Academy. I am most grateful that I did not have to view his wonderful works with their vivid colours through a haze of cigarette smoke.Penny HurtRadnorshire, Mid Wales